Animals, Science Fairs, Numbers and Lingro!

1) http://explore.org Is a fun site that has live video streams of many animals or places. It might be fun for some background as students work on an animal assignment or for students to evaluate the behavior of animals. 

2) https://www.googlesciencefair.com/en/2013/ The Google Science Fair is accepting submissions for the next 90 days. So, if you are interested in checking this out, they have a lot of age divisions and also have some inspiration here for other projects. 

3) http://www.youtube.com/user/numberphile This link is a YouTube channel with "Videos about numbers and Stuff" as they say on their website. There are videos about everything from solving a Rubik's cube to Numbers and Brains. In the same place I found this, I also read an interested blog post about raising mathematicians: http://davidwees.com/content/raising-mathematicians Some of these questions sound very familiar to some of the morning Math I've heard in Elementary classrooms. Very cool! 

4) http://lingro.com is a web tool that will allow you to translate a website or, even more exciting, define every word on a site. Here is one that I did for a Rube Goldberg website: http://lingro.com/translate/http://rubegoldberg.com 

Steps: 

1) Copy URL

2) Paste into lingro.com's text field

3) Click blue arrow and wait... it takes awhile for text-teavy sites

4) Then, your site will have the blue lingro bar on the top of the page and when you click any part of the page, it will pop up with a blue box with the definition! 

5) http://d97cooltools.blogspot.com/2012/09/commoncoreunpackingacademicvocabulary.html The link prior is an Unpacking Academic Vocabulary for Common Core blogpost. It has a lot of good information about what "Tier" of words you are using in the classroom. It also talks about using the Find Tool that works in most browsers and web sites (control + F on windows or command + f on Mac). Check it out if you have time. 

6) http://www.thinglink.com Do you know all those cool graphics in the Washington Post online or Time Magazine that you can hover over and get more info in a pop up bubble? Well, Thinglink allows you to make a jpg interactive. You have to create an account and upload your image or use a public image to start creating. I am excited to use this in Geography class so that students can take an image of a country or region and make it an interactive image with labels "hovering" over the image. 

I am gone on Friday to a training, but if you have any questions or I can help with anything, please let me know. As a reminder, the iPad checkout is located at: http://tinyurl.com/deuelipad  and you can check out the archived emails at : http://teachertechweekly.blogspot.com 

Have a great day!

Week Three- Wednesday Tidings

Thank goodness for air conditioning this week! Whew! By request, I am going to send this out earlier to give you time to plan your Friday. This week I have stopped into a few classrooms and dropped off some technology for you to try and let me know what you think. Don't feel bad if you aren't comfortable with it or if you aren't sure which direction you want to take. I will do my best to accommodate your ideas for classroom use and will share some ideas that I have too. 

I have a set of 'clickers' for the Promethean Boards that you can try, a document camera, a digital camera, a microphone and two digital video cameras you can use at any time. Stop in if you want them or I can bring them to your classroom and help you with set up. 

Friday, August 31 Schedule: (btw- you are all too kind for not correcting me last week...)

• No Staff

Friday, September 7 Schedule: 

• School in session.

Friday, September 14 Schedule: 

• Need to work into schedule: Review Write to Learn software and changes with Mrs. Boyd, Mrs. Lessman, Ms. Eggers, and Ms. Weinrich for 2012- 13 School Year
• Blogger follow-up (There are teachers using this in their classrooms- if you are interested in trying it too, let me know!) 
• Open

Please review the sheet I handed to you at the first in-service meeting and let me know what you are interested in. I would like to do a follow up for Blogger and Sites, but there is a lot more Search tools that I would like to share with you too. 

---

1) Interactive Timeline Builder via http://www.myhistro.com (there's an iPad app too!) By signing up for free, you can create your own timeline or have students create an interactive timeline. There are a lot of options beyond just social studies for this too. Historical fiction or non-fiction timelines could also be created. After signing up, you will be asked to create your first even. Each event works alone and you need to create a "story" to make the actual timeline. This also has collaborative aspects and sharing possibilities. It is probably best for MS and up. 

2) Math Dictionary via http://www.webquest.hawaii.edu/kahihi/mathdictionary/ This is just what it says it is... a math dictionary. It may be good for Math-related vocabulary terms as there are pictures for each term. You can also use this during a webquest to give students background information. 

3) Video Talks/ Lectures via http://keentalks.com Somewhat like Khan academy, Keen talks has more of a thought-provoking intention. One of their tag lines is "food for thought" and I think this may be something to show upper elementary/ MS/ HS students (depending on content) to get them to think critically about may perspectives. This one on Women's Intuition is rather interesting: http://keentalks.com/womens-intuition-other-fairy-tales/ 

4) App Friday via http://www.facebook.com/AppFriday If you are one of those on Facebook, here is a place to 'like' so that you can see what some of the free apps are on Friday. Check it out! 

5) Play the Election via http://education.randmcnally.com I won't give you a political opinion (yet), but there are a great ideas to teach the upcoming Presidential Election, ways for students to compete in essay contests, and other resources to explore.

6) Common Core Sample Questions As you know, grades 3-8 and 11 will participate in the Benchmark/ Growth Model Pilot testing four times this year. Each test for each grade will consist of 32 Reading and 40 Math questions. Although SD has not released sample questions, some other states have and I wanted to share those online resources with you.

http://www.parcconline.org/samples/item-task-prototypes#6 

http://www.p12.nysed.gov/assessment/common-core-sample-questions/ (bottom of page)

South Dakota is part of the Smarter Balanced Consortium and there are some examples and other information on the assessment:  http://www.smarterbalanced.org/smarter-balanced-assessments/  

Also, if you are an iPad user, I'd recommend downloading the Common Core App as an easy to read/ find/ manage the somewhat cumbersome inch-think printout of your Math or Reading standards. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/common-core-standards/id439424555?mt=8 

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

Use Better Searches for Better Results- Handout

Use Better Searches for Better Results 

**Adapted from Google Teacher Workshop Materials

“ “ Exact Phrase in Quotes: Search for an exact phrase.

What to type: “one small step for man”

What you’ll get: results that include the exact phrase “one small step for man”

- Excluded Words: Excludes certain words or phrases from your search.

            What to type: bass –fishing

            What you’ll get: results about bass that aren’t related to fishing

OR Multiple Words: Searches for webpages that include either word

            What to type: vacation London OR Paris

            What you’ll get: results with “vacation” and either “London” or “Paris”

… Numerical Ranges: Searches for a range of numbers (works with dates too)

            What to type: Willie Mays 1950… 1960

            What you’ll get: Results about Willie Mays during this time period

site:  Site Specific Search: Searches only particular websites

            What to type: Common core site:edu

            What you’ll get: References to common core found on .edu websites

After going to ‘Google’ and typing your term in the search bar, look on left side bar next to results and click on “Show Search Tools” below the search narrowing links.

Timely information: Click on a time range to determine the parameters of when the information you request was published.

Images Sites: You can search only sites with images to find visual aids for class with information.

Related Searches: Not sure what you could search related to your topic? Click on this to get a list.

Dictionary: Great for vocab and defining difficult terms and getting visual aids immediately.

Nearby: Has someone nearby our location provided information on this topic?

Translated Foreign Pages:  Doing research? Google will search sites in other languages for you too!

After going to ‘Google’ and typing in your term in the search bar, a “gear” will appear on the upper right hand corner of your search results. You can click on this “gear” to get to advanced search and start to look for just PowerPoints, PDFs or different creative commons options as well. Please let me know if you would like to learn more. Happy Searching!